Steve Spurrier, SEC Coaches Proposing Players Should Get Paid $300 Per Game For Family Travel Expenses

When we found out the South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier was batting cleanup on the first day of SEC’s Media Week, we knew we would be in for a few great comments. Spurrier didn’t disappoint — he enlightened us all on one particularly interesting proposal that all apparently ALL SEC football and basketball coaches support — getting more cash in the hands of college athletes.

That’s right, Spurrier said that all 14 SEC football coaches and all 14 SEC basketball coaches agreed that players should receive between $3,600-3,900 each season to cover travel expenses to get their families to attend games. Spurrier argued that $300 per game is a reasonable number (basketball players would get less per game, but the same overall total because they play more games) that would not be “pay for play”, but would simply make the lives of the players and their families easier.

“This is not pay for play. This is just expense money.” — Spurrier on his proposal for expense money for players

Spurrier even took the proposal one step further — apparently all of the coaches agreed that the money could even come out of their own pockets — that’s how adamant they feel that players are currently being undervalued. Clearly, football and basketball players bring in a ton of money for their respective schools.

This isn’t the first time that a proposal has been made asking that players receive more compensation for their services, but having 28 coaches from a single conference united as one is an impressive statement, especially considering they would pay the money themselves (a little less than $300,000 per year for a full football team). It will be interesting to see the NCAA’s response.